A substantial amount of damage to vehicles is caused each year by unattended and carelessly directed shopping carts in store parking lots. Shopping carts have a tendency to roll into the sides of vehicles causing dings, scrapes and small dents to vehicle body work. A large number of such impacts occur when shopping carts roll front end first into vehicles. The alignment of the wheels of the shopping cart and the distribution of its weight make front-on impacts quite likely.
In an attempt to minimize damage from front on impacts, existing shopping cart designs often incorporate the small bumpers of hard plastic along the bottom front corners of the shopping cart basket. While these bumpers can reduce damage from scraping of the basket against painted surfaces such as display cases and vehicle body work, they are too hard to effectively absorb impact energy in a cart-to vehicle collision. Hence, such bumpers do not substantially reduce the damage caused to vehicles by shopping cart impacts.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a more effective bumper system over, preferably, the front of a shopping cart basket to more efficiently absorb energy generated from impacts. It is a further object of this invention to provide a bumper for shopping carts that can be attached to existing basket structures without significant alteration to the basket. It is yet another object of this invention to provide a shopping cart bumper that is easily manufactured and that is adaptable to fit a wide variety of shopping cart basket shapes without substantial alteration of the basket or bumper.